At Maidstone, there was a large hospice for pilgrims travelling to Canterbury by Malling and Charing. St. Peter’s Church was formerly the Chapel of this institution. At Reading the hospice was founded by Abbot Hugh about 1180 and dedicated to St. John the Baptist. A sisterhood of eight widows ministered to the wants of the pilgrims. We may mention also the hospitals of St. Giles and St. Ethelbert at Hereford, both of very ancient date. At the latter alms were distributed to a hundred poor people daily. Under the sign of the _George Inn_ we can often detect the successor to a pilgrims’ hostel dedicated to St. George of the Dragon. The _George_, at Glastonbury, the very finest existing example of an inn built in stone during the Perpendicular period, was founded by Abbot Selwood in 1489, and provided board and lodging to pilgrims free of charge for two days. The _George_ at St. Albans, is more suggestive in its present state of a cosy well-ordered coaching inn of the Georgian period, with nothing visible of antiquity except its panelled staircase and beautiful old furniture. But its records carry us back to 1401, and in 1448 it received a licence from the Abbot for the celebration of low mass in the private chapel on account of the many noble and worthy personages who resorted thither when on pilgrimage to the Cathedral. At another George and Dragon hospice at Wymondham, the Saint has succumbed to the reptile, and the _Green Dragon_ presides alone on the signboard. Pilgrims to shrines beyond sea were not forgotten. At Dover the _Maison Dieu_ was built and endowed by Hubert de Burgh, the great Justiciary, in the reign of Edward III; and on crossing to Calais the adventurer found another _Maison Dieu_, the first of a long chain of resting-places on the way to Rome, the Three Kings at Cologne, or Rocamadour, in Guyenne, according as his fancy or devotion might direct him. CHAPTER IV THE RISE OF THE TOWNS Every high road leads sooner or later to a market town, and in that town the tourist may be sure of finding a _White Hart Inn_. The _White Hart_ is the commonest of signs all through England. Half-timbered and rambling, with the marks of decrepit old age and long service writ large all over it, this inn is in evidence near the market-place, often in a street of the same name, to remind us of its importance in the days gone by. Sometimes, as at Guildford and Brentwood, the old building lies hidden behind a more modern front. When the builder has laid violent hands on a _White Hart_, title-deeds or other authentic records of its antiquity are in nearly every case available. [Illustration: The White Hart, Brentwood]